Although Krauss says he’s wary of hero worship in his laudatory introduction, he nonetheless finds himself asking “What Would Noam Chomsky Do” when faced with a dilemma. He also points out that Chomsky has been “marginalized in U.S. media” for his anti-war, anarchist political views. Those views, of course, come widely into play during the conversation, which ranges from the theory and purpose of education—a subject Chomsky has expounded on a great deal in books and interviews—to the fate of political dissidents throughout history.

Chomsky also gives us his views on science and technology, particularly in the Q&A portion of the talk above, in which he answers questions about artificial intelligence—another subject he’s touched on in the past—and animal experimentation, among a great many other topics. Krauss mostly hangs back during the initial discussion but takes a more active role in the session above, offering views on medical and scientific ethics that will be familiar to those who follow his atheist activism and championing of rationality over religious dogma.

As Chomsky puts it, “the environment, the commons… they’re a common possession, but space is even more so. For individuals to allow institutions like corporations to have any control over it is devastating in its consequences. It will also almost certainly undermine serious research.” He refers to the example of most modern computing—developed under publicly-funded government programs, then marketed and sold back to us by corporations. Krauss makes a case for unmanned space exploration as the cost-effective option, and both thinkers discuss the problem of militarizing space, the ultimate goal of Cold War space programs before the fall of the Soviet Union. The conversation is rich and revealing and makes an excellent supplement to the already rich discussion Krauss and Chomsky have in the videos above.

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